For the first several hundred years of its history, the College was an all-male institution. The College first allowed female students to enroll in courses following the Second World War and awarded its first degrees to female students in 1971. The process of hiring female faculty was a more piecemeal one, as a series of extraordinary women brought their talents to the College, from one partial class taught in 1935 to a near equally divided faculty today.
The development of the DPE requirement spanned over 30 years, revealing not only moves made to diversify the curriculum but also the challenges of creating a well-defined academic requirement while maintaining the College’s trademark academic flexibility.
